The Boy With The Mask
by Zelith
Summary: It's hard to see him, because he glows really brightly. Sometimes he can't even be seen. Some kids have made it a sort of game to try to climb up his tree, see how long it takes him to notice and knock them down. He doesn't really like company, but that's probably because he's The Boy With The Mask. (Sequel to "The Cat Who Wasn't Really There") [No PP, no mentioned pairings]
1. Chapter 1

I liked to hang around near the brick building sometimes.

It was certainly interesting. No one saw me all that much but when they did, oh how fun it was to scare them! My broken mask shifted slightly, and I absentmindedly moved my fingers against its sharp edges. The perpetually grinning mask was stuck to the one half of my face, but that was completely alright. After all, it gave me the ability to Shift. Shifting was useful.

Right now, I wasn't worried about my mask or about scaring the boys out of my tree. Right now, I was focused on a human girl. Black hair, blue eyes. Her name, I remembered, was Dani.

***line break***

It all started when I left my home.

I didn't quite care for company, but I did have a knack for making people laugh. So I left my home to pull pranks and make believe that someone noticed what I was doing. That was the only time I didn't care if people were near me, as long as I made them laugh. My pranks were all in good fun and I was doing really well. I made people happy. Then I ran into a certain salesman. An ancient treasure called my name and nothing was ever quite the same.

I had panicked when the mask had first latched itself to my face. I thought it would be a normal mask, something that I could take on and off. I ended up breaking it in half when I tried to pull it off, and it had hurt to rip off even that one part of the mask. The second half had long since been lost and unable to be found. I didn't want anyone to see my face now that I had a mask stuck to me, but the next time I had been staring mournfully at my face in a mirror I had realized something...

My reflection wasn't my own.

Instead, it was a handsome calico cat with markings that matched the mask. Confused, I had reached down to touch it- and then I had gone _through_ the mirror.

When I had turned, my reflection showed the human me. When I looked down, I saw the calico cat. I realized that I could switch forms at will as long as I had a reflective surface, I could Shift. As a cat, I noticed that not many people could see me; those who could ignored me. As a human, I was noticed and people sort of stared. A lot.

So I had wandered for I didn't know how long and I turned up here, in this place called Amity Park, Illinois. The human girl seemed so familiar that I had taken to following her invisibly, finding out where she went and such. She unknowingly led me to the brick building and I had taken up residence in a pine tree. Every day, I watched her. She interested me greatly, and I- I didn't know why. I wanted to know.

I should have explained that I wasn't alive.

No, I was just a ghost. I didn't watch her because I was a stalker. I didn't watch her because I loved her- or perhaps I did love her on some sort of different level. I watched her the way a pet cat might watch its owner. I watched her the way an older brother might. I had some sort of affection for her, I knew that. But I didn't love her the way a man might love a woman.

I was a ghost; ghosts weren't allowed to love humans that way, nor did many of them want to. I certainly didn't. She simply interested me, so I wanted to know more. There was something about her that just looked so-

familiar.

***line break***

It started to rain.

I didn't really like the rain. Not because it got me wet (though that was part of the reason), but because the girl didn't come outside when it rained. Tail flicking, I slowly climbed out of my tree (wincing as I did so, because there were a lot of splinters in my hands now) and wandered over to the brick building. Phasing through the walls, I began to wander.

It was nice and dry in there, warm too. There were a bunch of mini-rooms that branched off of the long room, and I entered one that had kids in it. I kept invisible, of course. No need to scare anyone yet. There was an overweight bald man writing something on a board, but I found that incredibly boring. So I decided to have a little fun.

Now it was time to scare people.

I grabbed a piece of chalk (it _was_ chalk, right? Oh, how I hated the human names for things) and began to scribble all over the board. The man stopped, looking appalled, and I took that as my cue to keep writing. I grabbed a get-rid-of-the-lines thing and got rid of it all. Then, in nice big letters, I wrote out two simple sentences that even humans should have understood.

_Hello, young human children. My name is Illusion and I am "The Boy With The Mask", as you all seem to have named me._


	2. Chapter 2

Well, I certainly scared the poor little humans. Not that I felt regretful for doing it. All pandemonium broke loose as I surveyed the class. The girl, Dani, was here, I noticed with a little nod of my head.

"Show yourself, ghost!" the fat old man spat, his shoulders hunched. He had a... _newspaper_ in his hand? It was all rolled up like he expected to whack me with it.

"Oh no," I laughed, coming out of my invisibility, "I'm so scared-" I yelped as he swatted my face with the rolled-up newspaper, then snarled and bristled. "Hey! What was that for?!" I lashed my fluffy tail, for all intents and purposes wanting to just rip this human to shreds, but I bit my lip and just growled in frustration. "Hmph." I turned away from him, still floating. "Well, I _was_ going to help you, but now I'm _not._"

The teacher didn't answer me, and I finally risked a glance back at him. He looked sort of confused; I suddenly remembered that I didn't speak too much of the language that humans primarily spoke. I spoke Esperanto and Ghost, but my knowledge of verbal English was immensely limited. His brow furrowed and his eyes narrowed. I blushed green and picked up the chalk again.

_Sorry. Forgot that I don't speak verbal human-speak._

The man nodded in an almost sluggish way. "Do you understand English?" he asked slowly. I rolled my eyes and tapped his head. I nodded, not bothering to write on the weird blackish-greenish board. "Well then. Will you please either take a seat or leave the room? I am trying to teach."

_Key word: trying._

His face got a little red as I laughed, a harsh high-pitched sound that most people found highly terrifying. I settled down near the back of the class, lying on my stomach in midair. Who knew, maybe this "teach" thing would help a little.

***line break***

The old man got very angry whenever I attempted to copy his verbal noises, and eventually I took to muttering to myself. He became much more relaxed however, and every once in a while the mask's ear would twitch towards a noise and I would unwittingly become distracted with said noise until the fat old man caught my attention again with his fancy verbal words.

I was in one of my distracted times when I found myself wandering towards the wall. I walked right through it, ignoring the humans. I wanted to find the source of this strange new noise. It sounded like talking, but I couldn't understand it at all. Perhaps a language that I didn't know, or else the speech was just far too fast for me to follow.

The noise led me to an office-type room, where there were a bunch of big desks like the man's table-desk in Dani's room and there was this little woman who was dressed up very smartly who was yelling at a broad-shouldered boy in a reddish jacket.

I floated there, pleasantly listening in on the conversation. The woman was speaking far too quickly for me to grasp, but I got the sense that she was scolding the boy. Neither noticed me, and I wasn't even invisible. Landing on the ground softly and silently, I settled down in one of the big plushy spinning chairs and spun around and around while I listened to the woman scold the boy. When the boy was finally allowed to go, the woman huffed and turned back to her seat.

And saw me spinning around in it.

Her mouth opened in a silent scream of surprise, and I grinned cheekily up at her. I chirruped at her just for good measure, my tail happily laying between my legs as I spun round and round in her chair. Giggling madly and silently like a child on a sugar high, I slowly coasted to a stop facing the woman perfectly.

"Who are you?" she demanded. I smiled up at her again, pointing to myself. "Yes, _you._ Who are you?" She sounded a little annoyed at me now, but that was totally alright. I liked to annoy people.

Taking a blank paper from her desk and a pen (which she looked sort of miffed about), I wrote out in very nice big letters, _I'm Illusion. Who are you?_

"I am Principal Ishiyama, and I'd be delighted if you would get out of my chair!" she shouted. I jumped and stared at her, my eyes widen. My pupils shrunk and became slits, catlike enough that she must have noticed. I stared hopefully at her for a second but when her expression didn't change I sighed audibly and hung my head, floating out of her chair and slowly getting out of her way. I kept hold of the paper and pen, though.

Her expression was _priceless._

***line break***

I was perfectly happy to follow Dani around the brick building, as she permitted me to do. A boy who looked almost identical to her pointed me out as though she didn't know I was there; her sharp and snappy response made my day. The boy standing slightly behind the Dani-lookalike caught my attention, and I floated over to stare into his face. There was something on it, and I decided I wanted to know what it was.

So I took them.

He squawked indignantly while I messed with his glass-plastic thing that he'd had over his eyes, sure that he couldn't have meant for them to be there. But perhaps he had, so I took a look at his face again and then studied the thing again. It interested me enough that I slid it onto my own face, trying to find out their use.

The boy whose face-thing had been stolen laughed at my confused expression, trying to take the thing back. I jerked away from him and hissed, taking the thing off myself and clumsily shoving them back onto his face. He fixed it and snorted in mock anger, messing with another thing. It was like a mini magic-box, like the magic-boxes that humans kept in their homes but smaller and more... easily transported.

I was going to grab that too and find out what it was but Dani pulled on my tail and I reluctantly turned away from the dark-skinned boy, instead choosing to follow the girl. Pouting, I only followed her because I really was curious as to why human offspring would even want to spend time in this place. I failed to notice the boy-Dani glare at me as I floated after the human girl.

Oh well. Perhaps he had shoved a stick up his butt.


	3. Chapter 3

I tried to follow the girl home too. She kept saying something, something that I didn't quite understand, and she kept making these sort of pushing motions towards me when she realized that I didn't understand. It took me quite a while, but by the time she had reached the doors of the building I had caught on to what she meant.

She wanted me to stay behind at the brick building.

Hurt, my floating wavered and then I dropped out of the air, landing on my feet. She didn't want me to come along? Why not? Didn't she _like_ me? Wasn't her ear-petting and head-scratching a sign that she liked my company? Bewildered beyond belief, I stepped back a little when Dani made the pushing motion again, though it was hesitant now.

My blue eyes dropped to the floor and I then decided that no, she didn't like me. I shuffled away from her and, tail dragging, began to slink away back through the building. If she didn't like me, then I would just go and-

"Oh, alright, you can come! Just stop acting like a kicked kitten!"

Moments later, I was happily trotting along behind her, a silly grin on my face as she led me towards her home. She had warned me that I was to act like a human; meaning, no powers allowed. That undermined my confidence slightly, as I now had no way of protecting myself, but she told me her parents were something called "ghost hunters" and that they'd shoot me no matter what.

Weren't their names something like Maddie and Jack?

***line break***

Dani had discovered, with despair, that my mask did not in fact come off. I patiently allowed her to try, though I hissed at her when she attempted to use something shiny, hard, cold, and long to try to pry it off. I believed she called it a "screwdriver"? Something like that. I didn't let that get near my face, uh-uh. She eventually had to accept that my broken-in-half mask did not come off.

When she walked into a big, extravagant-looking building, I immediately followed her. After all, my human couldn't be allowed to enter somewhere so dangerous! My extra ghost senses were blaring in my face even as I eagerly followed the girl into the downstairs area of the den.

"Mom! Dad! I have a- uh- new friend! Yeah, a new friend, and I want you to meet him!" she called as she kept going down the steps. Like a lost puppy, I tagged along behind here even though the downstairs area smelled suspiciously like ectoplasmic remains. Apparently, the brick building had a ghost mouse problem that they had mistaken as a rat infestation. If I'd known, I would have been cleaning that place out for a long time. Good food source.

"Oh, Dani honey!" a woman in blue exclaimed loudly. I winced and touched my hand to my mask's ear. There was a large crack stretching from the tip of the ear to about an inch from the nick in the ear. It would heal, but loud noises tended to disrupt my mask.

I looked over the woman, taking in her green-stained blue pelt. The funny thing about humans is that they change their fur everyday! This one, however, appeared to have not changed her fur for several years.

There was a man too, a big male in orange and black. He, too, looked as though his fur hadn't been cleaned in a few years. He noticed me and lit up, but as the pair began to close in I felt panic creep into my throat and I backed away up the stairs partway.

"He's wild," Dani explained calmly. "He hangs out near the school all the time, and today he managed to slip in. Dad, yes, he actually is a ghost- _but if you lay a hand on him with the intent to hurt then you will have me to answer to!"_ she snarled in warning.

I placidly looked on.

"Are- are you sure it's not tricking you, dear?" the woman tried. While that was something I would do, I particularly liked this human. I'd preferred her trust to her delusions.

"_Him,_ Mom. Illusion is a _boy._" Dani was firm. "And no, he hasn't tricked me. Or anyone. He's just a bit of a troublemaker. And he's fairly curious about everything- I think it has something to do with that broken mask."

A bit of a troublemaker? I was highly offended. I was a troublemaker through and through, not just a bit of one! However, I sighed and decided to ignore that little bit of an insult.

"And if he _agrees_ to tests?" the orange man said hopefully?

"Then he's an idiot and I can't do anything about that," Dani said darkly. "But if you're going to try to convince him to let you run tests, then you have to tell him every- _ILLUSION WHAT ARE DOING?!"_

I had wandered through the talking humans and now I was free in the room. I took advantage of that to touch absolutely everything I could. She was right about one thing; I was curious. I picked up shiny things, pleasantly ignoring the two adult humans.

"Illusion."

I flinched and looked down the room at the angry girl.

"Illusion, you _put that down right this instant and get your furry butt over here before I hit you."_

I stared at her with big eyes, but when she didn't budge I muttered in angry Esperanto under my breath and placed the shiny 90-degree-angle thing (look, I _had_ learned something at the brick building today!) back on the table and skittered back towards her mutinously. When I got back to her, head bowed, she sighed and scratched me on the top of the head.

I would have melted if I could. I did the next best thing and purred, thumping right down and pressing myself against her leg. Even sitting, I was more than half the size of her standing. She had no trouble with keeping her hand on my head, and that was enough for me.

"As I was saying," Dani continued in an exasperated voice, "if you want him to agree to testing then you have to tell him everything about it. Whether it has a possibility of hurting him, what that percentage is- he did pay attention in math today, he's not an idiot- and if it involves dissection." I flinched at that last word but crooned when her hand pressed more insistently upon my head.

The adults' gazes flickered between me, purring on the floor and completely harmless (at that moment, anyway), and between Dani, who had a firm look on her face. Then the woman sighed and placed her fingertips upon her head on the space above her eyes.

"Oh alright. But if he comes down here and shoots himself with one of the ectoguns by mistake-"

"Then he's an idiot and I can't do anything about it," Dani quoted herself.

***line break***

The boy lookalike of Dani was absolutely mortified to find me positively bouncing around the "kitchen" as Dani made herself something to eat. He stared flabbergasted (wow, I learned words from the fat man too) at me, checking out everything in the room, to Dani, calmly making herself cereal and placidly telling me when not to touch something.

I didn't often listen to her warnings and I got myself a nasty burn when I touched the "stove" when the pretty blue-and-red "flame" was dancing on it.

"Dani, you can't keep him. He's not an animal- and if he was, he's _wild_."

"I know, Danny. I know."


	4. Chapter 4

The best part about being allowed to stay in the big den for the night was the fact that the girl Dani was perfectly okay with using me as a "pillow" while she slept the best part of the day away. Sure, I didn't get to walk around the den and check out the other nesting areas because Dani had her head on my side, but it was worth it because Dani was warm.

Well, warmish. She was certainly warmer than I was, since I was a ghost, but she wasn't as unbearable warm as the other redheaded girl was. Almost as though Dani was part ghost or something. But that was a ridiculous thought; it would take almost impossibly perfect circumstances for a human to become both alive and not-alive. Those circumstances were so impossible that as far as I knew there were no part-ghosts in the world.

My head snapped towards a sound near the door and my glowing blue eyes met a duller set of blue eyes. The boy Dani lookalike. Wasn't his name also Danny? Humans were very confusing. Why name your offspring the same as another of your own? The boy glared into my eyes and I felt my mouth snake into a pout, the mask magically changing to appropriately show my mood.

"You do anything," he whispered hoarsely, still glaring, "and I'll throw you into the Ghost Zone."

I giggled lightly, raising my glowing-green claws and playing with the dimensions. I could claw my way if I wanted to, and I definitely would just to get back to my human. I chanced a look at the human boy, whose jaw had dropped. Ghosts did not always carry the ability I had; then again, ghosts did not usually take a liking to humans.

I looked down at the human girl who had curled into my side; I looked up and gave Danny a pointed glare; Danny glowered right back and slunk out of the room, like a defeated dog. That thought did nothing to prevent my triumphant, cattish smirk.

***line break***

I happily enough followed Dani into the "kitchen" when she finally woke up. By now, the sky was becoming light again. She had definitely missed the best part of yesterday. But that was alright, because she looked better than she had when she had gone to sleep. That meant she would be up for scratching my head again. I liked the head-scratching and ear-petting and even the belly rubs. Her touch was like water, smooth and nice to the touch.

The family of humans did not seem as happy to see me as Dani had been when she'd woken up; instead, they seemed rather taken aback by the fact that I was still here and had not attacked anyone. I chirruped happily at them, even as I disabled their protective devices by hiding my ectosignature.

I became captivated with the shiny metal thing that Dani was trying to tell me about; she called it a "spoon". My human was trying to teach me English, I knew that, but I was far too entranced with the human things to actually pay attention to what she was saying. She made an eating motion with a spoon in her hand; I looked at the one she gave me and shrugged, giving it back to her.

Normally, I'd have eaten it, but since it kept coming out of her mouth untarnished...

"Do humans still speak Esperanto?" I wondered aloud, floating on my back to wait for my human to finish her human necessities; the boy Danny's head shot up with recognition flaring in his dully-glowing blue eyes. The other humans only looked at me oddly.

"Danny, Dani," the woman in blue said reproachfully, "do either of you know what he just said? Or what language he just spoke?"

"Esperanto," they said at the same time. "He asked if humans still spoke Esperanto. Tucker got me to learn Esperanto when that werewolf ghost was attacking the school," the boy added hastily. The adults looked at his suspiciously with the exception of the younger redheaded female but said nothing.

"Wow, would you look at the time!" all three offspring laughed nervously. "Time to go!"

"Come on, Illusion," Dani said, grabbing my hand and pulling me right along with her. I followed willingly, happy enough to go wherever she was going.

I soon discovered we were heading towards the brick building again, and I became excited. Perhaps the fat old man would teach me more things to say. Dani was trying to teach me to say her name, to no avail, but she had succeeded in teaching me to say the other girl's name. Jazz. The sounds were simple enough and I quite liked jazz music anyway. At least humans didn't name their kids Rock, Metal, and Pop.

I had gotten down the first two sounds of Dani's name, which was an accomplishment all to itself. "Dah," I purred whenever I wanted my human's attention on the entire way to the brick building which Jazz had named "school".

"Dah!" I chirped suddenly, perking my head up to stare out the transparent barrier at all the other human-carrying-machines which the boy Danny had grudgingly told me were "cars". "Dah, rrr!"

"Yes, those are cars," she answered distractedly, looking around for something. Her face registered shock and disappointment when she realized she didn't have the paper that she had stared and scratched at all yesterday. We weren't too far from the den; I would go back and get it for her because I knew it was still on her desk.

"Dah!" I insisted, giving her a nice big grin. "Dah," I pointed to myself, "get pap!"

***line break***

Despite the headstart I had at getting the paper to my human, I almost didn't manage it in time. I slid the paper invisibly into her hand just before the fat man "Mr. Lancer" asked the "class" to turn it in. I didn't know why he wanted the scratched-on papers, but he certainly got one from my human.

"Ah, thank you, Ms. Fenton," he said approvingly. Then he noticed me, now visible, floating in the back of the classroom with the cheekiest grin I could muster on my face. "And hello to you too, Mr. Illusion."

I chirruped.


	5. Chapter 5

No one else seemed to pay attention to the fat old man except for myself.

Even my human didn't seem to want to listen to him, but I couldn't for the afterlife of me understand why. I thought he was rather interesting; all the big English words he used made even Dani seem inferior. Eventually, "Mr. Lancer" seemed to notice that I was the only one giving him my rapt attention. He heaved a sigh and instead of talking to kids whose minds were elsewhere, he seemed to decide to teach me more English.

"Misser Lasser," I chirped, getting his attention after about ten minutes of reading the book he had shoved into my hands. He made his way over to me and I pointed to a certain line in the book. "Essplay?"

I didn't have a lot of the English sounds down, mostly because a few of them didn't exist in the Ghost language and the others were heavily distorted by my ghostly (and catty) accent. To name a few, the 'x' sound always came out as a sort of hiss when I tried to make the sound; the 'n' sound didn't exist; the 't' sound existed only in certain circumstances (like in the word 'get'; that had a 'tuh'); for the most part, Mr. Lancer had stopped trying to teach me the sounds that didn't exist for me.

"Ah," he said, smiling a little. He was still wary of me; I was, after all, a ghost. "James Keller compared Annie Sullivan to a general in a war. Do you know why he did that?"

I tipped my head to one side, the mask's ear twitching slightly towards a faint noise in the walls. Thinking it over carefully, I tried to make my words as non-disjointed as possible. "Becasse Jaes taut A-ie figh-ing a loose-ing bail?"

"Yes, precisely. James was sure that Annie was asking too much of Helen and was fighting a losing battle." Mr. Lancer had a real smile then. "At least _someone_ pays attention in my class, regardless of if said person is a ghost."

I only gave him a catty smile and a nice chirp.

***line break***

I followed my human around the brick building, getting close enough to sniff her. Of course, I didn't. That was something I only did at home while she slept. I wanted to show her my mirror trick, but for some reason she wouldn't go into the blue room with mirrors with me. I supposed she didn't like the room and so I stopped; but that wouldn't hold me off for long. I would show her my trick at some point.

Hopefully sooner rather than later. I wanted to know if I was invisible to her like I was invisible to so many others.

I yawned, tired of hovering around after my human. So in her last "class" of the day, I thumped down in the empty seat next to her and promptly tucked my head into my arms, going peacefully to sleep. At least, I tried to sleep. The teacher was far too loud, though I already had suspicions that humans were much less alert than I was. Even other ghosts were more alert than these humans were. Apparently, humans were a sight-based species. They didn't know how to use their other senses.

That worried me a little, but my human wasn't dead yet. Surely Dani would be okay? I would be here to protect her for as long as I was able; until my existence was either eradicated or the ghosts who hated me finally got me. Though, neither were likely. I was quite the escape artist. I was known to escape even ghost-proof holding containers. Since I didn't technically exist (at least, I shouldn't; I was obliterated a long time ago, but through a nice little loophole concerning my mask I stayed here), I could slide through things that were designed to hold me. After all, if you don't exist, then how can you be caught?

I'm not a ghost, I'm not a human, and I'm nothing in between.

I'm just an Illusion, the Boy With The Mask.

**BOOM GUYS HOW DO YOU LIKE THEM APPLES**

**no but really this is the end of this fic, don't worry i'll write a sequel to this because why the heck not. Also, I feel bad for leaving this huge cliffhanger. Originally, there was going to be more chapters, but then I remembered "oh yeah this is supposed to be a minific series not a real long thing" but still. You guys are awesome! Especially my best bud who gave the first and second review to this story. You're totally awesome, Exper.**

**ALSO I'M PROUD OF MYSELF BECAUSE LOOK AT ME I DID A THING TODAY**


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